The Magda Lensherr School of Women's Self Defense
by PastaEatingNerd
Summary: Magda Lensherr, vigilante fighter and devoted wife of Magneto, is sick of damsels in distress. When she and her friends start a school to teach superheroes' girlfriends to defend themselves, unlikely friendships-and other relationships-form.
1. Chapter 1

Gabrielle

The chess games were second-nature to her by now. Once a month at noon, on the dot, Gabrielle would accompany Charles to a nearby coffee shop and wait. Erik and Magda were usually late, generally having come from some top-secret location or other that couldn't be easily reached on the subway. Charles would smile ruefully at the sight of his old friend and Gabrielle would cease to exist to him for exactly two hours. Erik would never smile but he seemed perfectly happy all the same. Magda would give Erik's shoulder a squeeze before willingly leaving the two men to their own devices. Erik never seemed to distance himself from Magda the way that Charles did from Gabrielle, and, at first, Gabrielle was almost jealous of the nature of the relationship.

Then, of course, she'd gotten to know Magda and everything had changed. In superficial ways, the two women had nearly everything in common. Religiously Jewish enough to wear long skirts but not quite enough to cover their heads, both new mothers going to school-part time. They'd both come to the United States as adults, neither entirely fluent in English at first. Magda was a faster learner than Gabrielle had been and the first few chess games between their husbands served as tutoring sessions, Magda always willing to help Gabrielle with her ESL homework.

Nevertheless, there was always something cold and distant about Magda. Not unfriendly, definitely not unfriendly, but guarded, secretive, distrustful. Gabrielle couldn't put her finger on the specifics but decided that it was hardly her business to try to pick Magda's brain. Being married to a telepath had made Gabrielle all too aware of the value of privacy.

It wasn't until several years' worth of chess games later that Gabrielle had learned the truth. Magda was poring over a newspaper headline, her forehead wrinkled in frustration. Finally, after a few minutes of silence, Magda put down the paper and glowered.

"I cannot describe how much disrespect I have for Spider-Man," she'd spat.

"Hmm, what about Spider-Man?" Gabrielle replied, taking a sip of her coffee.

"He gets nothing but fame and recognition but the world simply fails to notice the fact that no matter what he does, the woman he claims to love always seems to get in trouble on his watch!" Magda pointed to a photograph of a young woman stranded in a taxi cab suspended over the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge, "sure, he rescues her, but he doesn't seem interested in making it so that she doesn't get captured in the first place. What sort of love is that? There's no balance there. If he really cared about her, she wouldn't be there in the first place. It's almost as though he actually wants her to stay in trouble so that he can get all the glory of rescuing her!"

"You really think so?" asked Gabrielle

"They're the worst kind of men, that sort," Magda continued, her voice rising steadily, "they always care more about keeping their power than the people they claim to love. Spider-Man is no hero! He's an exhibitionist! Good men stay by their women even if there's no glory to be had…especially when there's no glory to be had!" then, before Gabrielle knew it, Magda had begun revealing things she'd never so much as hinted at before, "all Erik wanted was for us to survive. We took care of each other. He rescued me, I rescued him, but mostly we just tried to stay safe. Erik never let me face danger without protection. We taught each other how to fight so that we had an equal chance of survival. He never rescued me just to grandstand. Glory is a privilege when you're just trying to stay alive. Our mutual love for each other was all the reward we needed…well, that and not being killed by Nazis! Heroism can be bought and sold these days but the real good men—the men like my husband—are called villains for defending their right to survive! What peril? What survival? What heroism? Spider-Man doesn't know the half of it!"

Gabrielle swallowed hard and put down her coffee. As she went to embrace Magda, Gabrielle couldn't help thinking of her relationship with Charles. He was mysterious, powerful, and chivalrous. She loved him with all her heart but in light of what Magda had said, she couldn't help but wonder if their relationship was truly equal. Was chivalry enough kindness for her to expect? It had seemed to be when she'd served in the military but now that domestic life had taken over and the strictness of boot camp was little more than memory, perhaps it wasn't . She would have been happy to live in a fairytale, even after David was born, but she couldn't help but wonder now, as she held Magda in her arms, if Charles' princely façade would be enough. Would he be a good father? Would he be willing to show more of his true self, not just his illustrious "Professor X" persona? Gabrielle didn't know. All she did know was that the bond between Erik and Magda that she'd once so coveted was not one she could expect to forge without a lifetime of suffering…and that, she could live without.

Mariko

Upon looking back at her first few years with the X-Men, Mariko concluded that she might never have become friends with Maeve Rourke if not for their mutual aversion to the taste of coffee. Mariko hadn't spoken to too many of the X-Men, choosing instead to stay close to Logan and play the role of the dutiful wife she knew that she would be when they got married. In the mornings, Mariko would drink her coffee in silence, cringing internally at the taste. Finally, one day, she'd decided that she'd had more than enough.

"Something wrong, Mari-Chan?" asked Logan as she'd left the room.

"Nothing, darling, just going to wash the dishes," she replied, biting her lip in frustration. She hated when Logan called her _Mari-Chan_. She was a grown woman, not a little girl. Logan was her fiancée, not her father. It was horribly demeaning as far as she was concerned. Nevertheless, Logan had saved her life many a time and he generally treated her well all things considered, so she decided that it wasn't worth getting angry over.

Mariko was pouring her coffee into the sink and preparing to wash her mug when she heard a woman's voice behind her.

"Glad I'm not the only one who won't drink that infernal coffee. Much prefer tea myself, not that you can get the good stuff here in the States."

Mariko turned around. She knew Maeve Rourke in passing, if only as the wife of Logan's teammate, but they'd never spoken before. Nevertheless, the girl that stood before her was right. It had been far too long since Mariko had had the privilege of drinking a decent cup tea.

"I couldn't agree more," Mariko replied, pouring dish-washing solution onto a sponge "is there really nothing to drink in this country but coffee, flavorless tea, and Pabst Blue Ribbon?" Mariko cringed as she mentioned this last drink, a favorite of Logan's. She loved her fiancée dearly, but the man truly did have awful taste in alcohol…not to mention the fact that he consumed far too much of it for her liking.

"Wanna find out?" Maeve asked, "heard Jean, Storm, and the boys'll be in the danger room until evening. I don't know about you but I'll go mad with boredom if I stay inside all day. There must be somewhere in this God-forsaken city where a girl could be finding some good tea."

"Sure, why not?" Mariko smiled and placed her mug carefully on the drying rack. She turned towards the rest of the dishes for a moment before deciding to leave them in the sink. Logan rarely did anything but sit around, drink, and train with the X-Men. Surely he could do the dishes just this once.


	2. Chapter 2

Moira

The radio-transmitter blinked green out of the corner of Moira's eye. Her heart leapt as she took the transmitter into her hand and turned up the volume. Static filled the room as she adjusted the various dials, searching for a signal.

Secretarial work was mundane to say the least, especially now that Moira knew how much else was out there. Sure, she couldn't remember exact details, but she hardly needed to, especially now. Superheroes—mutants and otherwise—were beginning to become commonplace these days. She could hardly go one day without reading some article or another about some masked vigilante with a clever code name. How boring, Moira thought. When she worked for the CIA, there were secret identities to be sure, but there were rarely masks involved. A mask was a privilege, Moira thought, especially after keeping company with mutants. Hank couldn't hide behind a mask now, could he? And frankly, now, neither could she.

No, Moira refused to let superheroes do the work she'd trained her whole life to perfect while she wasted her life away in front of a typewriter. She put down the transmitter once satisfied with the signal and rooted through her desk drawer. Her arsenal was just the same as she had left it: weapons, communication devices, miniature homing devices. _Bingo_, she thought.

"And in other news," came the static-y voice from the radio, "two foreign young women, citizens of Ireland and Japan, have been taken hostage in a local restaurant by the mutant criminal known only as the Vanisher. Meanwhile, Spiderman is occupied, fighting the Sandman in Manhattan, and the X-Men are trying desperately to keep up!"

Moira strapped on her holsters and protective gear, turning dials on her homing device fervently. She'd been tracking the Vanisher for weeks. He was a teleporter whose constant use of his abilities blurred his telepathic signature. She knew all too well that he was a particularly difficult foe of the X-Men. Luckily, the homing device that she'd implanted during her final months at the CIA—shortly before the Vanisher had teleported from his cell—was all she needed to track him down. Clearly, it was Charles Xavier's loss when he wiped her memory. She'd have to rescue those poor girls by herself. Not that Moira minded of course. Anything was better than slaving away at her typewriter.

Maeve

It never failed. Clearly, this was a curse that befell any girl unlucky enough to become involved with a superhero. Mariko had warned her that this might happen, that this was the kind of thing that happened when the girlfriends of superheroes went out unattended, but Maeve didn't listen. All she cared about was getting out of that stuffy old mansion and finding something decent to drink. What a price to pay.

"You know, this is really not so bad," Mariko had said, "back in Japan, I got captured by the Yakuza roughly twice a week. These handcuffs are uncomfortable, of course, but they're really nothing compared to being threatened with swords by an army of masked…"

"Yeah, I get the point," Maeve deadpanned in reply. The Vanisher, on the other hand, had plenty more to say.

"Are you questioning my villainous virility, you weasley wench? How dare you! Do you know how much effort I put into those handcuffs? It is all part of my marvelous master plan! Once your respective countries empty their treasuries to get you back, I'll be so wonderfully rich that I can buy all the hot dogs I desire!"

"You've got to be kidding me," said Maeve. Were these really the kinds of foes her husband faced on a regular basis? If she wasn't handcuffed to a chair at the moment, she'd have punched this ridiculous excuse for a super villain square in the jaw. She had never been interested in taking orders from men. There was a reason she married the do-gooder mutant boy who volunteered to cook dinner every night instead of a man like her father. But nevertheless, having a husband like Sean Cassidy had its obstacles…

"Don't look so glum," interjected Mariko, "within a few minutes, I'm sure my fiancé and your husband will come to rescue us. Logan's good about that sort of thing."

"Easy for you to say," Maeve replied, "you didn't marry the guy Magneto pushed off a satellite. My poor Sean; sometimes I think _I_ should be rescuing _him_."

"Excuse me, woman, but I was in the middle of an evil rant! What fun is there being a villain if your victims are always interrupting? I swear, these days, good damsels in distress are hard to fi-AAAUGH!" the Vanisher suddenly convulsed violently and crumpled to the floor.

"And I intend to keep it that way," came an unfamiliar voice. Its owner then replaced the small taser in her hand into its holster, removed a handful of lock picks from her pocket, and proceeded to unlock Maeve and Mariko's handcuffs, "Moira MacTaggert. Ex-CIA. You girls okay?"

"We are now," Maeve replied, "that was pure deadly!"

"And you did it with nothing more than a taser!" added Mariko, "my rescuers are usually mutants or have some other sort of ability. And they are usually men."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Moira replied, then, giving the unconscious Vanisher a kick, "anyways, I'm parked out front. How's about I take you girls home before this big lummox wakes up? That is if you don't mind making a stop at the police station."

Maeve and Mariko just smiled at each other and nodded in unison, "yes please, but can we get some tea first?"


End file.
